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How Long Can an Excuse be Used?

19March 2012March 19, 2012

When will they admit the facts - Things are getting worse and economic policy is not working?

How Long Can an Excuse be Used Before Accepting Responsibility

How long can you go without or more to the point how long can the Government go before they have to take responsibility for the impact on the people of their actions and decisions.

For instance, whenever and no matter who suggests an alternative economic policy to reduce unemployment and promote growth, or raise justifiable concerns over the Governments Welfare Reform Bill or Reforms to the National Health Service there is a standard response.

“We have to do this because of the economic situation we inherited in 2010”

In itself it is almost becoming a cliché as the last line of defence by the Conservatives when they can’t give a justification for some of the decisions they are taking both nationally and locally in Northampton.

So let’s look at the facts,

There is no question that the interest on the £988 billion UK National Debt in 2010 was £120 million a day. A debt that was as everyone knows the result of excessive and unsound bank lending across the world.

Strangely a number of prominent Conservatives and it has to be said some members of other political parties became wealthy people either working within the banking system during the period or as a by-product of the banks activities.

I’d be very interested to know how many are now Members of Parliament?

During the General Election television debates and campaign the public were constantly told, “We will reduce the deficit and national debt”, “we’re all in this together” and “Conservatives will protect front line services in education, policing and health”.

National debt is increasing at an accelerating rate damaging the UK for generations to come

So how do they explain the fact that the National Debt has for the first time in history risen to over £1 trillion, or to be more accurate £1,046 thousand million (figures that are staggering and difficult to comprehend) and rising.

What it means is that we have a debt of over £40,000 for every single person in the UK.

Interest on the debt has risen by nearly £9 million day in less than 2 years.

Add to that the little matter of the hundreds of billions of pounds that has been printed as part of what is called “quantative easing”, money that has been poured into the economy, or to be more specific into the banks, that will one day have to be paid back but which isn’t included in the National Debt then the scale of the problem not only for now but for generations to come becomes clearer.

It is that the country is spiralling into a crisis that can only be resolved by economic growth and putting the nation to work to produce the wealth and to bring confidence to the economy and more importantly to ensure that we don’t throw a whole generation on to the unemployment scrap heap.

Cuts to front line services in Northampton and the County was a local decision taken by the Conservative Councillors.

It was Eric Pickles MP who before the last General Election told Conservative Councillors that under the Localism Bill the decision-making would be devolved to them and they would have to take full responsibility for the decisions they took in terms of which services they were prepared to fund and those they would cut, and most importantly don’t blame the Government.

Clearly the message hasn’t got through.

Which brings us back to the original purpose of this blog?

How long can they go on blaming everything on the “inherited position” and continue to avoid taking responsibility for what has happened in the first 2 years of the Coalition Government?

On the positive side whenever the Conservatives respond to an issue with “we’re cutting services because of the inherited national debt” it is now seen as being tantamount to accepting they’ve got it wrong or have been caught out.

The opposition must now that when the Conservatives trot the line out they have achieved another small victory and while they may not have the numbers to win the vote they are certainly winning the argument.